(SealedEternal;51176)
Being "sanctified" is a process that is done through our faith in Christ, who gives us His Spirit to cleanse our wicked hearts and write the Spirit of His Law upon them. You're both part right and part wrong. It is not a process of religious works to save ourselves, nor is it an immediate event by believing some basic facts. First one must believe the facts of Christ, who He is and what He has done, and then must trust in Him, and walk by His Spirit, so that He may do His work in us to clean house and make us a sanctified child of His, who bears good fruit and does His will.Sacramental salvation claims that we can cleanse ourselves by performing religious rituals, which is patently false. Only God's Spirit is able to perform this act, and it is done through our faith in Him, and not by religious ceremonies.Easy believism on the other hand, claims that all you need to do is "believe" and suddenly you are born again and have eternal security. That is also false. It is through our faith that Christ's Spirit brings us through the process of sanctification, but faith is simply the dynamic that sustains us in this process, but it is not an end upon itself. One is not saved, nor do they have eternal security, until God's Spirit has done His work in us. That's why scripture says that those who are born of God no longer practice sin. Millions of people have been told that they have eternal life because they "believed", said a "sinners prayer", responded to an "altar call", or some other such profession of faith, but in fact they have not been born of God because they stopped the process and declared it finnished before God's Spirit did His work of sanctification in them.Millions of others are told they are saved because they are baptized, take the Lord's supper, or perform some other religious rituals. They too are subverting the Spirits work of sanctifying and regenerating them, because they think they are taking care of it themselves.SealedEternal
Since you seem to have missed my post about rituals I'll repeat it.(winsome;50953)
You regard rituals as empty and useless. But this is not the case. There is a power in them. Let me explain. If I am hungry and have a £50 note I could eat the piece of paper and it would do nothing for me. I would still be hungry. But I could go into a restaurant and have a big four course meal with a bottle of fine wine. Then I would not feel hungry. You see the £50 note has power to feed me, not because of anything intrinsic in the bit of paper itself, but because of the promise attached to it. It actually says at the top “Bank of England I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of fifty pounds” The fifty pound note does what it does because of the promise attached to it. What is the difference between a real £50 note and a forged one? The difference is that a forged one has no promise attached.It is like this with rituals and symbols. Some of them have promises attached; promises made by God, either explicitly or implicitly.When God created the world he involved man in His work – by asking Adam to name the animals (Gen 2:19-20). God didn’t have to do that. He was capable of naming them himself. Then God gave man the job of completing creation by taking dominion over the earth and telling him to fill it and subdue it (Gen 1:28). And so it has continued – God involves man in his mighty works. He doesn’t need to but for some reason he wants to. He gives him a part to play, even though it is God doing 99.9999999999999999……..% of the work.Sometimes man’s part seems trivial and pointless such as Moses having to keep his arms raised in the battle with the Amalekites in Ex 17. God could give victory to Joshua without that, but he seemed to want Moses to be involved as well.Take the Exodus itself, a wonderful pre-figuring of our salvation story. At the beginning God saves the Israelites from the slavery of Egypt through the waters of the red sea. God told Moses to lift up his staff and when he did so God parted the sea. Why? God could perfectly well part the sea without Moses doing anything. Similarly God could pass over the Israelites first born without the blood on the doorposts. He knew who they were. But God gives us a part to play in the salvation process. And so it has been through the history of salvation. God gave many rituals to Israelites. When the carried out the rituals God acted. God acted not because man made him do so, but because God had promised he would and he tied the promise to the ritual. It was not their work but Gods. They did it in obedience to God, who acted in response to his promise and to the obedience of his people.Take the sin offerings of goats and sheep that were sacrificed, or the sin offering of the goat sent into the wilderness. Again God could have forgiven people without this. But he wanted some gesture on their part. It did not earn them forgiveness.It’s the same today. God has not changed. He wants to get involved with our messy physical world, and he wants us to play our part, tiny though it is, in the salvation process. He has given us rituals, actions to do, and has tied promises to them. His is the power but he wants us to do our little bit. We do not earn his saving grace, and it does not diminish the efficacy of his work on the cross , but we do it because he wants us to. God can, and does, act without these acts of ours, but nevertheless he has tied promises to them and he does fulfil his promises.Let me take four examples of rituals, God’s promises and how he acts:1. Remember the story of the bronze serpent in Numbers 21:6-9Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.The bronze serpent itself had no power to heal. But God attached a promise to the act (ritual) of looking at the bronze serpent. And when they acted as instructed God honoured his promise.2. Then take James 5:14-15)Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven.Again there was a ritual. Did the anointing with oil heal them? No, the oil had no power to heal in itself. But there were promises attached to the ritual (and to the accompanying prayers of course). When the ritual was carried out we are told that God would deliver on his promise.3. See similarly Mk 16:16-18“Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation. The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: by using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”4. Now look at the ritual of laying on of hands by the apostles in Acts 8:14-19Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus). Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money, saying, “Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.”Did the apostles have power over the Holy Spirit to command him to come at their bidding? Did the act of laying on of hands have any power in itself? No, it was God acting on the promise attached to the act that brought down the Holy Spirit.winsome
